Solid Object - infinite distance

Wibbles
Wibbles Online Community Member Posts: 3,366 Championing
in Coffee lounge

Sitting in the sun, in the garden this afternoon - I suddenly had a thought

Did you realise that if you go in a straight line in any direction that you point to in the sky - you would eventually hit a solid object….. be it a planet or star - because the law of infinity - you could travel forever at infinite speed (which would get you an infinite distance) - but eventually, you would hit a solid object……..

This assumes that the universe is an infinite size (but nobody has ever or ever will prove that it is)

Comments

  • Mary_Scope
    Mary_Scope Posts: 4,220 Scope Online Community Children and Family Specialists

    I have never thought about this before @Wibbles, a very interesting concept

  • Santosha12
    Santosha12 Online Community Member Posts: 3,775 Championing
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/144397/solid-object-infinite-distance

    I find this fascinating Wibbles! In 2016 I bought a telescope and went to astronomy night classes most of which were held at Delamere Forest where it was a fairly dark sky. Plus went in the day when we used the tutors' solar telescope to watch I think it was Jupiter eclipsing the sun, could have been Mercury. The Sun was absolutely amazing to look at.

    Was never going to make an astronaut ha ha spent too much time taking cakes for everyone once we got onto anything physics related. Eating cake with a cup of tea ha ha but it was a lovely hobby.

  • JessieJ
    JessieJ Online Community Member Posts: 1,366 Championing

    Deep thinking! The way space is going at the moment though, we'll hit some manmade object before we got too far. 😉

    Saying that, I used to have a telescope & loved looking up at the wonders above. Then, when I lived in the country with absolutely no light polution, I just used to sit out on a clear summers night, into the early hours spotting satellites, now there would be too many to count.

  • Ross1975
    Ross1975 Online Community Member Posts: 887 Championing
    edited March 3

    If the Universe is infinite, then anything that is possible no matter how unlikely must happen and happen an infinite number of times.

    So the fact that you exist means you are possible, so there will be an infinite number of you's in the Universe, and also an infinite number of slightly different you's as well, like you wearing a clown costume while juggling coconuts for example, there'll be an infinite number of Scope forums exactly like this, and versions with green backgrounds, versions with orange backgrounds with stripes, etc.

  • Wibbles
    Wibbles Online Community Member Posts: 3,366 Championing
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/1106341#Comment_1106341

    And when the universe was created - it started as an infinitely small grain of dust and expanded at infinite speed to an infinite size - and is still expanding at infinite speed to at least 45 million light years (the size of the observable universe).

    Imagine drawing little galaxies on the surface of an infinitely small balloon and inflating that balloon to see the galaxies getting farther apart.

    It really hurts my mind to think of this….

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